Video gamers worldwide may be risking irreversible hearing loss and/or tinnitus—persistent ringing/buzzing in the ears—finds a systematic review of the available evidence, published in the open access journal BMJ Public Health.
What evidence there is suggests that the sound levels reported in studies of more than 50,000 people often near, or exceed, permissible safe limits, conclude the researchers.
And given the popularity of these games, greater public health efforts are needed to raise awareness of the potential risks, they urge.
While headphones, earbuds, and music venues have been recognized as sources of potentially unsafe sound levels, relatively little attention has been paid to the effects of video games, including e-sports, on hearing loss, say the researchers.
What is the correct thing to do?
Defaulting to 50% volume would be a good start, might be too quiet for some, might still be too loud for others. But at least it's not guaranteed to blow most peoples ears out.
What I don't understand in this thread is most people seem don't seem to be mentioning that you shouldn't have your master volume turned all the way up, especially if you have issues with loud volumes. It would be odd to me for a program to default to 50% for its volume. Since no others do, it would sound very quiet compared to all else and then I'd have to adjust it to undo that weird difference. Do people really not turn their master volumes down? I don't get why not, I do literally constantly.
Same. It was a shock to me reading all the replies of people not just turning down the master volume. Usually there is a button on you keyboard specifically for that!
Yeah exactly! I love that modern OSes and apps have individual volume sliders in case I need them, but in reality the way it plays out is the more volumes I adjust, the more confusing it is. I turn my PC speakers or headphones up to a level that basically caps the volume so it never blasts me too badly, then I just adjust my master volume on my keyboard and/or media PC remote. It tends to work well. Very rarely is something loud enough in this context to be alarming. Every now and then, I have to turn down a volume slider within a game/app, usually the music slider. If apps set their default volumes to 50% that would be annoying for me. Although I will say that the idea someone in the thread had -- to display a volume slider with a test sound on first launch of a game -- is a good idea.